Thursday 24 September 2015

The tolerance in the world


Berlin, buildings

The impatience and the tolerance in the world seems to be getting lower for each passing year. It is hard to say if that is really the case or if it is simply because I am getting older and by each passing year also my time frame seems to change and at least I hope that my patience is growing. There also seem to be situations that I have built up automatic responses to where one could claim that I have zero patience.

Back in the past when I was working in a large company the employees were allowed to smoke at work. Here I do not mean that they had a special ventilated room or so but they were sitting even in their offices smoking. The managers wanted to change this and during this change there were even discussion about completely forbidding smoking on the premises.


The smokers were highly upset and were fighting vigorously for their rights as individuals and adults to keep the right to self decide if they want to smoke or not. The none smokers, the majority, were mixed in their decisions many still saying that they found it disgusting with the smokers. I personally agreed with the smokers that as adults they must have the right to smoke if they want to. I as a non smoker must also have the right to not be exposed to that smoke and in the end a smoker room was created. Almost everyone were happy besides from some really insane people that kept smoking in their office. This very same person even smoked while interviewing me for the job in the company. Imagine seeing that today in Europe!

Later on at a different job in a different country I once again ran into smokers. Back then I was sitting in an large office with eight people and the smokers arrived to this office to smoke and then the left again. Within a year also the rules there were changed and it was no longer allowed to smoke indoors. This is around 10 years ago. Imagine today if someone would be sitting there smoking in their office. I would say it is almost unheard of but should it be?

There are many situations in live today where the tolerance have decreased substantially. Extremes have become not allowed and yet for a child with a peanut allergy entire schools change their canteen, vendor machines, give rules to all the other parents to make it illegal to give the child sweats to bring to school etc.

Funny how thing can be. We do not allow some extremes and other extremes we decide to arrange the rest of our Universe around. So in a way we are getting more tolerant and increase our patience and on the other hand we strongly decrease it. The question is what will the end result be? Should we rearrange the Universe? By not exposing our children to peanut are we enhancing their chances for becoming allergic? Are there investment thoughts that one should have concerning this?

P.S.
Much is happening in my life at the moment some things you know of such as my studies, other things you do not know of (I am looking for a new job). Due to that I decided to apply for a new job I am forced to fly here and there for interviews and before going anywhere I need to prepare myself very well for the talk. This is currently eating up all my time and leads to far fewer articles.
The worst of all with interviews is when they come with the question of salary. I have many years of experience in my field and my CV looks ok but for instance in Sweden I would be paid a good salary. However the Swedish salary that I would get today is more or less as a Germany entrance salary with my level of education. If I go to Switzerland that entrance salary would be double what one gets in Germany (but costs are also sky high) and in Germany and Switzerland my ten years of experience will be added on top of those entrance level salaries. What should one ask for in the UK? In France? In the US? Kuwait? South Africa? Singapore? So I hate the question regarding salary and yet it is so important.
D.S.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting read! On my first apprentice job 15 years ago in a german oem company there was a beer vendor machine, which had to be refilled every day. This was one of my main responsibilties ;)!

In which Business area do you work ?

Regards Matthias

Fredrik von Oberhausen said...

Hi Matthias,

Ah, yes, in Bayern there has for a long time been a tradition of the employees drinking beer at work. The older generation does not even seem to consider it to be alcohol but drink it as if it were water. I have heard that it has changed a lot during the last couple of years.

I worked back then within a unit of process engineering.